A Mystic Guide to Cleansing & Clearing

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Introduction

As spiritual or magical people, we often like to believe that the world is filled with light and love, ready to support our every desire. We walk through life knowing that the forces and powers around us are available to tap into and use for all our needs both large and small. I see proof of these powers every day in my life and am constantly seeking to take advantage of the many blessings that surround me each day. In many ways, the universe truly is conspiring to support us.

But sometimes the universe is not conspiring to support us. Sometimes people do terrible things to each other. Sometimes we walk through life’s mud and tread it all over our brand-new white carpet. Most of us know that the crud that comes along with living is inevitable. We also have a tendency to forget that we do have a say in how we deal with the crud when it comes our way.

The options are simple: you can take charge of your life or you can be stepped on. Whether it’s by people, situations, or energies, the same two choices are always presented. We may not be able to control the garbage that comes our way, but we can deal with it with wisdom and power. Making the right choices is easier said than done. Many of us have become accustomed to being stepped on in different areas in life. Many of us largely ignore it or brush it off as simply going along with the territory of living. Some of us may even think we deserve bad treatment! Maybe it’s time to break the pattern.

Cleansing unhelpful energies is just as much an internal process as it is an external one. We need to look inside ourselves and uncover any patterns and complexes that might be drawing the crud our way. Only then can we wisely look around us and figure out where else it might be coming from. This book will approach both methods, giving us a holistic and balanced approach to cleansing and clearing. There are other cleansing books out there that focus on the cleansing practices of specific spiritual traditions around the globe. While I’ll touch on many of those and draw inspiration from their practices, I’ve endeavored to create methods of cleansing that are specifically suitable to the modern-day witch and magick-worker. This means that we’ll mostly stay away from cleansing methods that use tools like psalms, Christian prayer, or others from the monotheistic mindset. There is already plenty of reading material on those methods (see the appendix) and it’s high time we have options aligned with Pagan thought.

This book can be used as a complete system or as a compendium of individual methods. If you’re looking to incorporate the whole width of cleansing techniques into your spiritual practice, you may want to do all of the workings from start to finish. You can also simply open up a page with a spell, ritual, or other exercise that speaks to you and perform it right away. This is by no means a definitive work on the subject of cleansing and clearing, but it should arm you with the tools necessary to get started with this work and inspire you to continue it beyond this book.

Now, let’s roll up our sleeves, pick up our brooms, and get to work!

Chapter 1

Cleansing Tools

My first teacher, Miss Tina, once told me: ‘Tools are the icing on the cake.’ I don’t think she meant that they are in any way unnecessary, but that they’re given to us to add richness to the deep well of power that magickal people draw from by virtue of their very nature. You can absolutely perform cleansing procedures on your own, and you should! A well-skilled mystic should be able to cleanse and clear without any tools whatsoever. After all, we never really know the types of situations we’ll find ourselves in.

Tools are helpful because they speak to the subconscious in a way that raw actions usually cannot. In the psychological sense tools are symbols because they represent the ability to perform an added task that is learned through basic human evolution. When early humans learned how to use tools for building things like shelters, weapons and fires, humanity began to grow by leaps and bounds. It is for these reasons that tools have a certain power and prominence that cannot be understated. Picking up a tool for mystical purposes declares to the mind that ‘something magickal is happening’. It’s a trigger that is essential for propelling the mind into an alternate state of consciousness that’s essential for magickal acts.

The following are descriptions of tools used for cleansing and clearing that I’ve come to know and love throughout my years as a mystic and witch. It is by no means exhaustive and I highly encourage you to research tools used by many spiritual traditions all over the world that you may find useful for your own personal practice.

The Broom (Besom)

In magickal practice, the word ‘besom’ is often used interchangeably with ‘broom’, although besom is the word used to describe any broom that is made with traditional folk methods. For our purposes here, the besom is the type of broom used by the magick-worker for sacred and mystical purposes only. In the traditional way, the handle is made from branches of hazel while the brush part is made from birch twigs bundled together. Hazel is the tree of enchantment and is widely known as being a plant favored by witches. Birch is the tree of beginnings and can be seen as a plant to bring in a fresh start to things. An alternative has the handle made of ash, which is sacred to the faery people of Celtic lore, with the brush made of willow branch ends, sacred to the Goddess and the powers of water. Some prefer a handle of oak, a tree most prized by the Druids as being the most powerful of all. Oak is also sacred to Zeus and Odin, the kings of their pantheons. The symbolism of the broom is special as the phallic shape of the handle and vulvic shape of the brush remind us of the importance of honoring the sacred power present within both sexes.

Obviously the broom has longstanding associations with witches thanks to Hollywood and modern art of American and European Halloween lore. Interestingly, the broom’s connection with witchcraft extends much further than its partnership with the hook-nosed hags of the modern October celebrations. Witches have been connected with flight for hundreds of years, at least since the 16th century. Earlier stories show witches riding on common kitchen tools such as soup spoons and forks. Later images show them riding on tools like the pitchfork, and then finally the broom. The witch trials of early modern Europe claimed that witches used these tools to fly to the sabbath, the diabolical meeting grounds of the Devil who they would meet and copulate with in exchange for their infernal powers. In reality, the broom is more often used for what most think of as its intended purpose: cleaning!

Although you can obtain a traditional besom from any number of Pagan vendors or online retailers specializing in traditional brooms, I recommend you make your own if you can. Handmade tools tend to pack a stronger punch since there’s an intimacy that grows from creating something out of nothing with your bare hands. All you need to do is obtain a branch from any sacred wood as your handle. Here are some ideas:

Alder: Storms

Apple: Healing and love

Ash: Faery magick, dreams, visions

Birch: Beginnings and new homes

Blackthorn: Expels the worst curses

Cedar: Earth energy

Elm: Stability and grounding

Fir: Clarity and perspective

Hawthorn: Protection

Hazel: Lunar magick

Holly: Resurrection, resurgence, and second chances

Oak: Horned gods, success, and stability

Pine: Purification

Rowan: Protection against enchantments

Willow: Lunar magick, goddesses, and adaptability

Simply hold the branch for your staff (which should be about the length of the ground to your heart) and bind your brush material with twine, yarn, or rope. Make sure the knot is tight since you may need your besom for intense future cleansings! Bless and empower your besom with prayers and energetic workings appropriate to your personal tradition. My favorite method is to sprinkle the staff and brush of the besom with blessed salt water while under the light of a bright full moon. I may say something along the lines of:

Handle to brush and brush to ground

sweep all illness outward bound

with cunning sight and speed

this besom is blessed and so the deed.

It is often recommended that the besom is swept with a west to east motion, following the course of the setting sun. Although when you’re using it on a house with many rooms and floors, that can get a little confusing. I think it’s fine to sweep any way that seems sensible for the room. I do, however, urge you to sweep in the direction of the doorway to the room that you are in. Instead of simply stirring up and disrupting negative energies, you want them to actually vacate the room and your home, so this is important.

Your besom’s brush bristles don’t actually need to touch the physical floor to sweep out energy. I like to imagine sparks of blue flame shooting from the tips of the brush blades as I sweep about 3-6 inches above the surface of the floor. As I do this, I imagine the pockets of negative energy being forcibly bound up and brushed aside with every sweeping motion.

Knowing the basics of besom cleansing, get creative with how you do your sweeping. Try a regular routine of besom cleansing where you ‘sweep out’ unhelpful energies right after you finish the chore of actually sweeping up dirt. If you have hardwood floors, try laying down a cleansing powder and sweeping that up along with the dirt before you begin your besom cleansing. This is a fun cleansing method for families since kids are given permission to make a mess, and then tasked with mindfully cleaning it up right after. You could even make a game out of it!

The Wand

The history of the wand in magick is even more widespread than the besom. Everyone from the priests of ancient Egypt to the ceremonial magicians of the Renaissance used magickal wands in one form or another. The wand is a symbol of sovereignty and represents the holder’s authority over the self and their environment. It is a representation of the will and an energetic extension of the arm, showing the magick-worker’s ‘reach’ into the otherworld. This sentiment is still seen in the rods and scepters carried by certain members of royalty in kingdoms throughout the world. And although those rods are more symbolic than anything, it shows how the power of the wand has survived in its prominence. We can think of it like the trunk of a tree or the stem of a plant, as a conduit connecting different types of energy and acting as a channel for them.

To craft your own wand, all you need to do is find a small fallen branch of the wood you like and cut it so it’s the length of your elbow to the tip of your middle finger. It can really be any size you desire, but this is the standard length in many traditions and tends to feel the most comfortable for most people. Next, you’ll want to perform any physical changes to it you want like shaving off parts of the bark, sanding it down, and even finishing it with a paint or enamel if you like. Most of these changes will be cosmetic, but I do think there is a certain power in personalizing the wand to make it your own. After that, bless the wand by whispering your intentions into it and making an offering to the tree spirit you took it from. A cup of blessed water is fine. A wand used specifically for clearing, banishing, and even cursing is called a ‘blasting rod’. You may find it useful to have a wand that acts solely as your blasting rod and using it only for that purpose.

The power of the wand as a show of sovereignty and authority is what we’re concerned with when we talk about cleansing work. This is especially so in the case of entity moving and removal. There are all